Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor S. Jackson

J.D. Seminar 313 | 3 credit hours

This seminar gives students an opportunity to develop their negotiating and drafting skills and to appreciate the relationship between the negotiation and drafting processes in contemporary practice. Students examine various issues of legal negotiation, including bargaining strategy, case valuation, ethics, communication, the psychology of negotiation, and creative problem-solving. The seminar also introduces the concepts and techniques of legal drafting and covers such topics as planning, risk allocation, strategic drafting, interpretation and plain language. The seminar is primarily taught through a series of negotiation, planning, and drafting exercises. During several in-class and out-of-class assignments, students negotiate agreements (in fields such as employment, commercial, tort, entertainment, or civil rights law); students then draft, negotiate the language of, revise, and critique their agreements.

Students may not receive credit for both this seminar and the Negotiations Seminar; or Negotiation and Mediation in a Public Interest Setting; or Contracts: Structure and Negotiations; or the Negotiations and Mediation Seminar.

Attendance is required and all enrolled and waitlisted students must attend the first class in order to be enrolled in this seminar.